The observatory in Flagstaff operated five telescopes, but all were smaller than modern research telescopes and, with a couple of exceptions, decades older.

To keep Lowell's research mission alive, the observatory joined forces with television provider Discovery Communications to build a $53 million, 4.3-meter behemoth and bring Lowell and its university partners back to the forefront of astronomical research.

The Discovery Channel Telescope, estimated to be the fifth largest in the continental U.S., now sits ready in Happy Jack, roughly 40 miles southeast of Flagstaff, waiting for the stargazing to begin in earnest after nine years of construction.

The observatory celebrated the completion with a "First Light" gala last month, headlined by Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong and showcasing pictures taken by the telescope of M51, the whirlpool galaxy; M104, the sombrero galaxy; and M109, a barred spiral galaxy.

Bill DeGroff, the telescope's project manager, said the telescope gives Lowell and the three universities that partnered on the project nearly unprecedented amounts of time on an advanced telescope to track stars and other celestial objects over multiple nights and years.

"You can't do that on Hubble, you can't do that on Keck, you can't do that on Subaru, but we can do that here," he said, referring to other major telescopes.

Having that level of time and access to an advanced system also makes it easier to obtain grants for further research, DeGroff said.

The telescope will be used for any of the dozens of projects happening at Lowell, including studying binary star systems, dwarf galaxies, exoplanets and objects in the Kuiper Belt, the debris-ridden area beyond Neptune that is home to dwarf planets and thought to be the progenitor of comets.

Initial funding for the project came from John Hendricks, founder of Discovery Communications and a member of the Lowell Observatory Advisory Board. Hendricks put up $6 million of his own money, and Discovery Communications contributed $10 million. The rest came from private donations and the endowment set up by the observatory's founder, Percival Lowell.

Construction began in 2003 and finished with the installation of the instrument cube, a port for attaching imagers and spectrographs, on Feb. 7. As those instruments arrive and are tested, research will gradually begin.

The Happy Jack site was chosen for its good "seeing," or a stable atmosphere above the telescope that will not affect image quality. Close utility lines, proximity to a main road, and, because the site was once a gravel pit, little ecological impact also made the site ideal.

The site includes a shop to carry out the multi-week process of deep cleaning the 7,000-pound primary mirror and recoating it with reflective aluminum 100 angstroms thick -- the length that facial hair grows every 25 seconds.

The observatory also purchased a nearby ranch to house astronomers coming to use the telescope.

For the colleges partnering with Lowell -- Boston University, University of Maryland and University of Toledo -- the new telescope means prestige and a distinctive research opportunity.

Sylvain Veilleux, an astronomy professor at the University of Maryland, said the college will have 50 nights a year on the new telescope.

Veilleux said one of the telescope's advantages is its instrument cube allows toggling between instruments in a matter of minutes. That ability is important to the school's study of gamma-ray bursts, intense explosions in deep space that fade within hours of detection. The university is also developing an instrument with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to attach to the telescope for that purpose, he said.

J.D. Smith, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Toledo, said the partnership will "completely revitalize the program." The school has 20 nights a year for the next 11 years, which is sure to attract students and faculty to the university, he said.

"We feel fantastically lucky to have gotten in on the ground floor," Smith said.

Boston University will pay $10 million over the next decade for 45 nights a year on the telescope, and $500,000 annually after that to share in upkeep costs for the Discovery Channel Telescope and others.

James Jackson, associate dean of research and outreach for Boston's College of Arts and Sciences, said the partnership is "transformational for the department," as the school had no access to a state-of-the-art research telescope previously. Also, beside the research and grant opportunities, there are now links with Lowell and Discovery Communications to aid the school's education and outreach efforts, he said.